**Saskatchewan News**

[idealisttotheend]

CBC Regional link

A week ago the Pembina institute came out with a report calling on the Saskatchewan government to increase oil royalties. (When the government is the landlord) Being the Pembina institute it wants the money used for research into new energy technologies and cleanup of old drilling sites.

This does seem like a good idea since Saskatchewan could sorely use a new economic engine (wheat is just so "old economy" ) and the Liberals are only proposing a 10 cent a barrel increase.

Also interesting though is that Alaska gets $11.60 per barrel and Saskatchewan only collects $4.50 even though I expect it can't a lot less to extract oil in Alaska than it does in Saskatchewan. Free market Alaska versus socialist Saskatchewan? Alaska has more than double the royalty?

BTW -- Alaska has a novel way of dealing with it's oil royalties, described here, paying dividends to it's citizens. This is opposed to how Alberta does it, putting the monies into general revenue and being broke as a province when the price of oil falls (no new schools/hospitals this year) and rich when it goes up, leading to instability and unpredictability in provincial budgets year after year. IMO the Alaskan way makes much more sense though, back to the topic at hand , I think Saskatchewan's royalty rates should be higher regardless.

[Big Blue Machine]

Shouldn't Sasatchewan get the same oil royalites as Alberta?

[idealisttotheend]

Alberta's are $ 4.30 a barrel and Saskatchewan's are $4.50 a barrel. The rates are set by the provincial governments.

[Big Blue Machine]

Alberta doesn't need to set high oil prices because they are debt-free.

[idealisttotheend]

But if you lived in Alberta wouldn't you want a bigger chunk of all that money, especially as prices rise? I mean it could lead to lower taxes, more infrastructre, better programs (or the Alaskan way, a check in you hand). It could be invested in other sectors to develop them for when the oil runs out.

In short why should the multinational oil companies get such a large piece of the pie insead of the government/people taking some too?

BTW, goverments set royalty rates for oil not oil prices (though one could argue governments that are members of OPEC set prices Canada is not a member.